If you’ve ever wondered about it, you’ve joined a conversation as old as life itself. It’s one of mankind’s puzzling mysteries. The Book of Job delves into the heart of this mystery. Job was “blameless and upright” but he lost everything anyway. Children, wealth, health, all gone. His friends showed up with a naive answer: suffering is equated with punishment and Job must have sinned. The logic was simple, but it was also wrong. Job knew it. God knew it. The book doesn’t resolve the problem. Instead, it gives us permission to wrestle with the mystery, to ask for answers, to refuse easy comfort. In the end, it reminds us that God’s understanding runs deeper than our finite accounting. 

Scripture casts valuable light on this mystery. God created human beings capable of choice—to love, to build, to bless, to help one another. That same freedom can also turn to violence, betrayal, indifference. When bad things happen through human choices, we’re watching the demise of good in society, in human relationships. It’s not that God ordains these bad actions. He gives us freedom, but freedom without love is destructive. It is meaningless. On the other hand, when good things happen through human choices, we’re witnessing the grandeur of the soul in all its beauty, the power of grace to lift up, and to transform daily existence.

St. James has this to say about life’s adversities: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2–3). This passage doesn’t mean that God orchestrates bad things as a teaching tool. Rather, it addresses a stubborn fact: trials are inevitable, and they can reshape us like gold refined in a furnace. This metaphor acknowledges both the reality of the fire and the possibility of transformation. Not all suffering ennobles. Some just destroys. Let us pray that the Lord delivers us from evil.

It is normal to be confounded by bad things in life. St. Paul admits we “see through a glass darkly.” Randomness exists. Chaos exists. Things happen. Not every “why” gets answered this side of eternity. Faith doesn’t demand omniscience from us. It asks us to trust the One who sees what we cannot see. But here’s the twist, and it’s the hinge on which our faith turns: God doesn’t observe our suffering from a safe distance. He enters into it. Jesus—fully God, fully human—experienced betrayal, stark violence, physical agony, and the silence of heaven: “My God, my God,” he cried, “why have you forsaken me?” That’s the voice of someone who knows, someone who entered into the wreckage to save us.

Listen to these words of St. Paul: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8 :28). Notice St. Paul doesn’t say all things are good. Some things are evil, senseless, unbearable. But God can work through all things—even the worst things—toward good. Resurrection followed crucifixion. Beauty emerged from ashes. Hope walked out of a sealed tomb on the third day.

If you’re in the middle of the puddle right now, I won’t hand you platitudes. Your questions are valid. Your grief is real. Your fury at injustice is righteous, and God is large enough to absorb it. But you’re not alone. The Good Lord who created you, He created us, one and all. Scripture says one day God will wipe away every tear. Death will be defeated. All things made new. The question “why” will either be answered or, in the fullness of God’s presence, cease to matter.

Until then, we walk by faith. We carry one another’s burdens. We hold fast to hope. Not the hope that bad things won’t happen—they will—but the hope that bad things don’t write the ending.

God does.

—Fr. Hugh Duffy, Ph.D.